Category Archives: creativity - Page 9

what’s new?

Posted by on March 4, 2010 No comments

Over the past few days the primary question, creatively, that has haunted me is “what’s the way forward?” Part of me wants to say “the question for this generation of artists is…” but in truth, I don’t really care about the generation. They’re not in my head. I am. So my question is: what is truly new?

The leap that music made when electronics and computers created all of the new timbres and possibilities in the early 20th century seems all but spent now. It’s no longer enough to come up with a beautiful tone or a perfect simulation. It’s expected. The context of the tone is the thing. It always has been, but for a long time a composer could get away with quite a bit as long as the sounds were interesting or created via a new method. In some cases the same old sounds made a new way was enough to attract attention.

Please note: There are no deep insights here.

Years ago, when I was stuck and looking for a guidepost, I would go to the EMF’s web site and look up a new CD by a composer I’d never heard of before. That’s how I found Hildegard Westerkamp and her wonderful soundscapes. My Larry Austin collection started there as well. Today it feels like there’s less that I haven’t heard and I wonder if my listening is simply not deep enough for the music being produced today (do I get it?). Or perhaps it’s that the magnitude of available music is so great that there isn’t time to spend on deep listening. And with so much available, there’s no reason to work at a piece that doesn’t instantly connect. If the web in 1996 looked the way it does today I wonder if I would have had the guts to spend time with the work of Austin or Westerkamp. I might not have taken the time because there would always have been something else that fit my existing palette right at my fingertips.

This speaks volumes about how I feel about my music today. If it doesn’t connect with the listener the first time, what chance do I have? With the constant communication and connection brought to us today, it’s hard to imagine not trying to please the audience. The days of “who cares if they listen” (google it for a giggle) are long gone and the time of the retweet and page rank is here. What is a composer to do?

Well, I dig deeper. I listen to the things that inspire me. I follow twisting paths of references from recording to recording and trace the life of different composers hoping to pick up the scent of something that I missed. I really do wonder if I’m not part of a lost generation of composers. Creative minds lost to the media that surround them and unable to create a new message because the methods are all so novel that they beg investigation.

What a wonderful problem to have, on the surface. And if the problem were only on the surface, I’d be fine.

open to influence

Posted by on March 2, 2010 No comments

I have a nasty commute. 40 miles each way in Houston is about two hours on the road daily. With that kind of time my very large catalog of music gets dull quickly, so I rely on podcasts to fill the gap. I have to say that of all of the things The Almighty Internet has brought, radio is the best. Wait. What I meant was that I listen to a lot of podcasts on a number of different topics. When I have exhausted the reserves of a given set I will go in search of new life and that’s how I found Radio Lab [http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/]. It’s a great show that deals with science and art. Mostly it’s radio shows the way I would do them if I had the drive. Every show is really a long piece of music from the way the interviews are edited to their presentation. It’s brilliant.

This morning, I pulled down a couple of their older shows to fill the gap and there was a short about Terry Riley’s “In C.” A group of composers was asked to remix it and the results were pretty exciting. For me, they were perfectly timed.

Last night I spent my time in the studio pulling apart a couple of tracks I’ve recorded over the past couple of weeks. All of the tracks were acoustic guitar. Using a variety of simple techniques, I managed to obliterate any reference to the actual instrument and instead created a smear of sound. The structure of each piece was left in tact, but the effect was entirely different. I did the work hastily and without too much thinking. That’s more difficult than it sounds given the nature of software and user interfaces. It’s really hard to simply react with software the way one can with a musical instrument. There’s a lot of work to do in that area. In any case, the results were interesting but there was something missing.

And that’s why “In C” was a good thing to hear this morning. The approach taken by the various composers suggests solutions that I might not have come to as quickly. It’s relatively exciting.

Half of getting good creative work out the door is being open to different ways of thinking about it. I’m intrigued by how events and input that could be taken as random really aren’t (in this case by virtue of the fact that I’m me and I chose to expose myself to a given piece of material) and exactly how important that is to the development of the work.

possible interactions include

Posted by on March 1, 2010 No comments

The opinion is beginning to form in the back of my mind that perhaps books should have labels not unlike drugs. “Caution: this book has been known to derail creative thoughts and cause endless anguish.” Or maybe “Do not operate recording equipment after reading.” Maybe I should learn not to mix manifestos with deep creative work. Timing is everything.

Last week I finished Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget” and now I’m reading “Reality Hunger” by David Shields. These are not the books for me to read while doing creative work. Especially when I already charted my course. They certainly would have served my process last summer or (likely) in the coming hot season. Both books beg the question of innovation and look critically at the work being done by creative people today. In “Reality Hunger” there’s the sneaking feeling that too many people are losing sight of where we are culturally and the impact that art is making right now. It’s a great book, by the way. I don’t know that it serves the reader when read front to back but given its design one could easily pick it up, flip to a page, and get something from it. I’m at the 80% mark and would recommend it.

What my reaction to these books has done is place an additional burden on my current process. I’m suddenly very aware of what I’m doing and whether or not it is bringing anything new to the table. Everything is overly self-conscious and I have deep fears about what that will mean to the work. I probably should have picked up a novel instead, but the fact of the matter is that I’ve been waiting for books like this. It’s troubling to need something that gets in the way, in the short term anyway.

style and progress

Posted by on February 24, 2010 No comments

I finished reading “You Are Not A Gadget” by Jaron Lanier. I don’t know to whom I would recommend the book, but I’m sure people should read it. He’s critical of technology in all the right ways and while I don’t agree with everything in the book (a manifesto) there was plenty that made me think. There were two big sticking points for me that got the wheels turning. He mentions that if he went back in time and told people that in the promised land of the future the best that our open culture would create would be a UNIX derivative (Linux) and a new encyclopedia (wikipedia). That stopped me dead in my tracks. He’s right. We’ve come up with a lot of “new” ways to do the same old thing. A bit depressing, that.

The other thing he mentioned was that the ’90s really lacked a musical style. I tried really hard to find some music from my college years that stood out and had a feel that couldn’t have happened in any other time and I was stumped. Maybe the ’90s and much of the ’00s were some sort of vacuum for music. A rehashing that has led us to a culture of mash-ups and re-contextualization that have been a kind of creative doldrums. It’s also possible that this assessment is missing a greater narrative that we’ll only see a decade or so from now. It does leave me wondering what’s being done now that is going to lead to the next leap. After all, in years, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix weren’t that far apart but stylistically they are different planets. Where is that now? Somewhere.

This has definitely colored the way I’m treating the work I’m doing now. I’m ignoring certain notions that I once had and am taking a more extreme approach to my next offering. I had imagined doing something simple and acoustic but I’m second guessing that now. There’s an urge to chase an older stream of work I did and combine it with my recent sketches to see what comes out. In the end it’s alchemy that will lead to the next quantum leap.

There’s so much to think about while doing the work. And that’s the key: The Work. It can’t stop. But it can change.

goodbye to a piece of gear

Posted by on February 21, 2010 2 comments

When I started playing the guitar what I really wanted was to play the electric. Something loud. Something purely rock and roll. But when mom picks up the tab for the lessons, she gets a lot of say in the matter. That meant it was a good year or so before I actually moved from studying the classical guitar to the electric. I was still in junior high when I got my first electric guitar. It was a Cort knock-off of a Les Paul. Not pretty. Barely functional. I still remember hearing voices and drums through the pickups. Not that it mattered. The thing weighed a ton and took a lot of abuse. It was also $99. The perfect price point.

At first, I played it through our old 70s vintage Pioneer receiver. It worked well for a time. I could really overdrive that bad boy when no one was around. But it wasn’t portable and I couldn’t really jam with other people. So I bought an amp. At $129 the Peavey practice amp was the best thing going. It had a pretty crunchy sound and could keep up with a drum kit. I saved my pennies and dimes (allowance, lunch money, and anything I made by mowing lawns or shoveling driveways) and eventually had the funds to take it home. To say I was excited doesn’t really cover it.

I used it for practicing in my room late at night. It travelled to college with me. Then on to New York City when I went to grad school. I drug it to the harsh winters of Minnesota and it kept me busy on long, boring nights in the corn fields of Iowa. And when I moved to Texas, it was in the back of the truck bopping down the road. But something changed. It always does.

It’s never a question of if a piece of gear will fail but rather when and how badly. When the end came for my old Peavey, it was serious. One channel was all gone and the other barely held on to its voice. So it is now ready for its final journey to the end of the road. The list of components that are salvageable is zero items long. Stuff like that wasn’t made for stripping for parts. And so a solid piece of gear passes into the night after about 22 years of loyal service. So long, old friend. You were truly the real deal.

peavey amp

And don’t you worry, the amp that replaced it pushes a lot more air and will more than do the job.